


And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [37]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Darcy Lewis Feels, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fix-It, Parenthood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:54:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.Fall, 1976: Preparations
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Series: The Long Way Around [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1402126
Comments: 45
Kudos: 188





	And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Mary Oliver's "The Swan"
> 
> This was not supposed to take as long as it did, but the words just kept lining up and the ending kept getting further away. For those anxious to know when the wee baby Shieldshockling will be making his or her appearance, it will be in the next fic! Feel free to tell me if you think they're having a boy or girl and what his or her name should be. 
> 
> Also of note, things I've never been, nor never will be: Pregnant  
> Super hella extra things I've never been nor never will be: Pregant with a baby that's half super-soldier. Your guesses on how the specifics of that work are as good as mine; I've got a plan and some basic research for how it's going to work in this universe. Please be nice to me about this. 
> 
> Love you ships, thanks for hanging in here with me. Can you believe we've been together for a YEAR already?!

_October_

The examination table creaked quietly while Darcy sat on the edge, swinging her legs back and forth. Her heels hit the table legs lightly, tapping a rhythm in time with the fat raindrops splashing the windows.

Across the small exam room, Dr. Li was scribbling on a patient file clipped to a slim manila folder. She glanced up and regarded her patient carefully. A glossy lock of black hair dropped into her face. She tucked it back behind her ear. “So, you’re really not experiencing _anything_ out of the ordinary?” she asked, looking back down at the chart. “No abdominal pain or leg cramps? Changes in your skin? Headaches?”

“Nope,” Darcy shrugged. “I feel great.”

“But even before,” the doctor said, flipping back to the notes that had been taken at Darcy’s last check-up. “You said there was no nausea at all? No morning sickness?” Darcy shook her head. “No fatigue? Cramping? Dizziness?”

“None of the above,” she answered before she could stop herself. It was too late now to make something up, she realized. Too late to have lied and said she was sick and exhausted all the time for the first three months like her sister had been. Like Tangie had been. _Like_ _most women were_.

“And this is your first pregnancy,” her doctor stated, a little too skeptically to be a genuine clarification.

“Yep,” Darcy nodded with a nervous twinge in her gut. “I guess I’m just getting lucky?” She rested a hand on her belly and smiled when she felt a soft tap against her palm. The first time she felt her baby move, it had been like a swishing inside her, like something slithering across her stomach and she’d jumped backward with a yell that had brought Steve running across the house in a panic to reach her.

But that was weeks ago and soon that fluid swishing had given way to legitimate kicks that they could both feel and that were happening more and more often.

Darcy watched as Dr. Li made another note. There were things she _could_ mention, she reasoned as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth again. Like the fact that she had so much energy she was walking miles worth of laps around the hospital everyday and sleeping almost exactly five hours a night. That all her senses felt like they’d been sharpened to a fine point. She was no longer wearing her glasses and could hear conversations all the way down a busy hallway as if they were happening right in front of her.

But mentioning any of that was going to lead to a landslide of questions she had worked so hard to ensure were never asked.

“I mean,” she coughed and pulled Dr. Li’s attention upward swiftly. “I’m a lot hungrier than I was.”

An understatement. She was hungry all the time. All. The. Time. She’d never eaten so much in her life. Their weekly grocery bills were starting to give her anxiety attacks and more than once she’d wondered if she would have to get a second job to be able to feed 1.5 super-serumed individuals for the next twenty years.

Dr. Li wrote it down, somewhere toward the bottom of the chart. “And how’s your sex life?” she asked, her head bent toward the scratch of her ballpoint pen.

Darcy smiled. “It’s great; how’s yours?”

Her doctor looked up again and smiled back. “It’s a serious question, Darcy.”

“It’s good,” she shrugged. “It took about two months to convince my husband he wasn’t going to break me,” she added with an affectionate roll of her eyes. “But otherwise,” another shrug before she frowned. “That’s okay, right? I’m not supposed to be abstaining or anything?”

Dr. Li offered another patient smile and Darcy decided she liked her so much more than her previous doctor—a sixty-five year old man who’d barely looked at her, told her to cut her smoking down to a pack a day (ignoring her vehement insistence that she didn’t smoke to begin with) and told her not to get attached because he was retiring at the end of September. Darcy had _not_ gotten attached and was happy to find she’d been reassigned to this bright young woman with sharp, intelligent eyes and chewed cuticles.

“No,” she shook her head and that lock of black hair slipped over her ear again. “I know my predecessor would have told you not to, but it's perfectly safe," she said with a dismissive wave in the direction of the door, as if he was still out in the office somewhere. "A lot of women find they don’t feel like it the first few months anyway,” she added with a roll of her own narrow shoulder. “Though that’s mostly due to the nausea and fatigue. If you’re feeling well enough, go for it.” She looked over Darcy’s chart again and shook her head a second time. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep it up for the next few months. You’re officially the healthiest expectant mother I’ve ever seen. You and your baby seem to be perfect condition.”

Darcy looked down at her belly again. “Hear that, Smudge?” she asked with a smile. “Top of the class already.”

Steve was just getting home as she was pulling in. They’d gone from sharing one, borrowed car to each having their own and Darcy would have been lying if she said the freedom it brought was anything less than delicious. She waited for him to close his door and go around to the passenger side before she pulled all the way in, tucking her Nova in between his Impala and the empty flower bed she’d forgotten to plant all summer.

“Whatcha got?” she asked as she got out of the car and noticed the brown paper bag in his hand.

“Chinese,” his eyes moved from her face to the plastic bag looped around her wrist. “What _chu_ got?”

“Books,” she replied, tucking her keys into her purse. She met him in the center of the driveway and tilted her face up to his for a kiss.

“What kind of books?” he asked while they made their way up the walkway. He unlocked the door and held it open for her. “And how was your appointment?”

“It was fine,” she said easily and shrugged out of her jacket. “That’s what the books are for.” She took the bag of food from his hand and set it on the dining room table before she picked up Scrabble and cuddled him to her chest. “Let’s eat,” she suggested, giving the squirming, purring cat a kiss on the head before she let him go.

Once she’d devoured two huge helpings of vegetable lo mein and four spring rolls, Darcy pulled the small stack of books from the shopping bag and set them on the table. Steve raised an eyebrow. “Is this your way of telling me you enrolled in nursing school?” he asked, sliding the OB nursing textbooks she’d purchased from the university’s used bookstore toward himself.

She shook her head. “Your super sperm is making me too healthy,” she said before she relayed the details of her earlier appointment. “Which, of course, _I_ already knew,” she went on. “But I’m starting to sound like a broken record when all I can report is that I was expecting all kinds of physical complications and other shit to go wrong, but in reality I’m really just super hungry and super horny all the time.”

“That’s my girl.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Darcy continued. “I’m going to find something non-life-threatening to fake before next month.”

Steve flipped through one of the books and studied a diagram with a frown. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I don’t think she’s going to be less suspicious if I tell her the truth about how I can all of a sudden pull a helicopter out of the sky and then run sixty miles.”

He looked up, mildly surprised. “You’ve been disabling helicopters without me?”

She grinned. “Betty Friedan encourages all women to a have a healthy host of hobbies and interest outside the home, Steve.”

Steve shook his head with a smile and reached for the closest white takeout box. “I got extra spring rolls—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish his offer before Darcy snatched the box from his hand and polished off the rest of their dinner.

_November_

The portapak recorder hung heavily off Darcy’s shoulder, its strap dug into her through her sweater as she made her way into the house. The extra weight only offset her balance slightly more than her swollen, seven-month belly. “Okay, so here’s—” she stopped what she was about to say as Steve passed through the front hallway on his way to the kitchen. “Hey!”

He stopped and turned, his expression shifting to one of surprise. “What is _that_?” he asked with a laugh, motioning to the video camera in her hand.

“The great-great-great grandmother of my beloved Vine,” Darcy answered smoothly, shifting the strap higher up onto her shoulder. “I’m making a video,” she added, pulling her eye away from the viewfinder to shoot him a grin. “So that Smudge can see what life was like before they were around.” She cleared her throat. “Speaking of,” she tucked herself back behind the camera. “Check out this absolute babe,” she raised her voice so the mic mounted atop the camera would pick her up as she followed Steve into the kitchen. Steve laughed again but didn’t turn around as he opened the cabinet and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. “This stone-cold fox is your daddy, Smudge!”

The film would record in black-and-white, so no future generations would see the way Steve’s ears and the tops of his cheeks had turned pink when he turned around. He set his glass on the counter and stepped closer to her. “Let me see this,” he muttered, shaking his head as he took the recording pack from her.

“What are you doing?”

“Offering a second perspective,” he said before he scoffed. “Jesus Christ, how much does this weigh? Forty pounds?”

“Twenty-five, I think,” she replied before Steve took the camera from her hand and took a step back. She held a hand toward the lens. “No, no,” she laughed. “I don’t want to be on camera! I’m a mess!”

“You are not,” Steve assured her with another smile as he peered through the viewfinder. “And this has to be a considerably better view than the one you were getting before. As long as we’re making introductions, Smudge,” he said, clearing his throat. “Look how beautiful your mother is.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “She’s had better days,” she muttered, reaching up to yank down her messy bun and scratch her nails against her scalp before she raked her curls out of her face and sighed, realizing Steve was not relinquishing his role as cameraman until she said something.

“Hello, my sweet baby,” she said to the camera, unable to keep her smile from spreading wider across her face. She pointed to her belly, stretching against the material of a sweater that had once been three sizes too big. “This is you. You’re about two-thirds of the way finished baking,” Steve chuckled as she continued. “The doctor tells me you’re a good, healthy size, but to _me,_ you’re absolutely gigantic and I don’t know how you’re supposed to get any bigger without your host vessel,” she motioned to the rest of her body, “exploding but I guess we’ll find out. So far,” she twisted her lips in thought, trying to remember what she’d liked to hear when she was little about her baby-self, “we don’t know too much else about you yet except that you really like eating _all_ the food in the world and,” she paused again and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “You really seem to like it when your daddy talks to you.”

That might have been her favorite development: Steve talking to her belly and the baby kicking in response. She liked to watch his face when he put his palm against her, the soft smile at the corner of his lips, all the love she could see in his eyes when he looked up at her.

“I wanted to do a little walk-through of the house,” she said, tilting her head to one side to catch Steve’s eye away from the lens. “Are you going to give that back?”

“Huh-uh,” he shook his head, wiggling the camera back and forth for good measure. “You’re the star of the show now.” 

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re not cute.”

“I don’t have to be cute,” Steve shrugged, unconcerned. “I’m just the cameraman.”

Darcy took a deep breath in and shook her head. “Okay, fine,” she sighed. “This is the kitchen,” she motioned to their pale-yellow walls and tan countertops. “Where I spend most of my time these days.”

“Not most,” Steve amended lightly, following her as she made her way past him.

“And this is the dining room where we’ll play Scrabble and I’ll probably make you do your homework at some point,” she said, waving toward the table, not actually being able to imagine having a child old enough to have homework. They took the turn back toward the front of the house. “Living room,” she motioned toward the bay window like a gameshow host. “And the fireplace, in front of which I shamelessly seduced your father, which is how we got you—”

“And why you’re not watching this until you’re thirty,” Steve scoffed.

Darcy laughed. “I wasn’t going to give a play-by-play,” she insisted. “Although,” she went on as they started walking down the hallway, “if you wanted to use that camera for any other kind of,” she glanced back over her shoulder, “extra-curricular activities, I would take very little convincing.”

Steve laughed again. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He sucked a breath in through his teeth when her hand landed on the knob of the closed door to the small second bedroom that had served as a guest room until recently. “Oh, hey, don’t open that yet.”

Darcy frowned. “Why not?” she asked, dropping her hand.

“It’s a surprise and I don’t want to show you on camera in case you don’t like it.”

Her face only wrinkled further. “Well then turn the camera off,” she shrugged. “I’ll play with it later,” she glanced down at her sweater and ill-fitting jeans. “When I’m not such a mess.” She looked at the closed door and then back at him. “What kind of surprise?”

She ended up being the one to shut the camera and the recording pack off, winding back the film to reuse and shoot something a little more cohesive later. Steve took it back from her and set it on the dining room table before he returned and stepped in front of the door. “Close your eyes?”

She obliged and held out her hand for him to lead her into the small room, which smelled like paint and the rain breezing in from the open window. Her socks slid over plastic before Steve stopped and squeezed her fingers. Cautiously, Darcy opened her eyes and felt all the breath sweep from her lungs.

While she had been running her typical Saturday errands, Steve had been painting. Three of the walls were the soft, silver-blue he’d painted the weekend before, but now one wall was home to a field of brightly colored additions. Spindly yellow trunks and fluffy, bushy tops in magenta and orange and purple. “You painted Truffula Trees,” she said softly as a smile overtook her face.

But he hadn’t just painted Truffula Trees, he’d set the Lorax peering around the edge of one. And Horton the Elephant with his clover was by the window. A trio—two Sneetches and Yertle the Turtle—were painted balancing on the baseboard near where Darcy had said she wanted to place a bookcase and a rocking chair.

“It’s not finished yet,” Steve said, drawing her attention away from all the little, whimsical touches he’d scattered around the mural. “But…what do you think?”

Darcy thought her cheeks might hurt from smiling so wide. She let out a soft laugh. “It’s wonderful.”

_Thanksgiving_

“Why haven’t you had your baby yet?” Lauren Reyes asked from Darcy’s right side.

She smiled patiently. “Because it’s not time yet.”

“But how much longer do we have to wait?” Lauren’s twin sister, Lisa asked from Darcy’s left.

“A few more months.”

“But that’s forever!”

“I promise it’s not.”

“Don’t you want to have it early?” Lauren again.

“Not _this_ early.”

Darcy had been missing Tangie all day, but she missed her a little extra just then. If for no other reason than when she was around, Linda’s ten-year-old daughters were so infatuated by Jesse that they tended not to ask so many questions.

But Tangie, Jesse, and Darren were at Darren’s family’s house for Thanksgiving and Darcy was in the hot seat, fending off the third degree.

“Okay, but _how_ early would be okay?” Lisa asked.

“Not early at all,” Darcy laughed lightly, trying not to feel overwhelmed, which is exactly how she felt when she let herself think about everything that still needed to be done before January.

“Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?” Back to Lauren.

“I think it’s a baby,” Darcy said, as evenly and diplomatically as she could.

“But what do you _want_ to have?” Lisa again.

“And are you sure you’re not having twins?”

“ _Lauren Maria Reyes, what_ did you just ask her?”

At the sound of their mother’s voice, both twins went pale and their brown eyes widened. Linda stood in the doorway of the living room, her hands on her hips. Lauren gaped. “I didn’t mean because she’s fat or anything!” she exclaimed, getting up without argument as Linda snapped her fingers and pointed to the spot beside her hip. “I just wanted to know!”

Linda’s pointed finger moved in the direction of the dining room and kitchen. “Dad is cleaning up the dishes,” she said, no room for disagreement in her voice. “Please go and help him.” Lauren said nothing but tossed back her blonde head with a dramatic sigh and sulked out. “Lisa, go with her.”

There was a loud _tsk_ of annoyance from Darcy’s left as Lisa got to her feet. “But we weren’t even talking that much,” she muttered, shaking her head before she followed her sister.

Linda waited until her twins were out of the room before she dropped down into the worn armchair in the Mitchells’ living room and put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry, Darce.”

“It’s okay,” she assured her friend, although she was grateful for the intervention. She waited until Linda looked up before she frowned. “I don’t _look_ like I’m having twins, do I?”

She didn’t think she did. With this high-burning metabolism she was sharing, she’d only gained about twenty-five pounds and most of that was all up front. But she still _felt_ enormous. Her weight had always been evenly distributed and with each passing week as her breasts and belly grew heavier and heavier, it was getting hard to look at herself and think ‘cute pregnant’ instead of ‘ready to pop’.

“Of course, you don’t,” Linda said, eyes wide. “Jesus, no. When I was pregnant with the girls, I was four times your size. You look _great_. Really,” she added firmly. “You should be pregnant all the time—it looks good on you.”

Darcy was mildly comforted by Linda’s kind words and opened her mouth to thank her, but her attention was drawn toward the doorframe again where Steve had appeared, speaking in low tones with June. She smiled at them. “Is there anything I can do to help clean up?” she asked. “I feel bad just sitting here.”

June waved her hand. “You don’t think anything of the sort, young lady,” she said firmly. “We’re nearly all cleaned up anyway.”

“Carla’s just slicing the pies,” Steve put in. “Do you want pumpkin or pecan?”

Darcy bit her lip, her insecurity about her size forgotten. “Yes?” He laughed and crossed the room to kiss the top of her head, reaching beside her for her empty water glass. She waited until he was close enough to ask. “Do you remember if I had coffee this morning?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Do you want a cup?”

She held up her index and thumb a few inches apart. “Little one.”

“Actually, honey,” June spoke up as Steve slipped past her. “Do you think you could help me with something? It’ll just take a minute.”

Darcy blinked. “Uh, sure,” she said. Though, as she struggled to sit straight up and push herself off the low couch, she wasn’t sure how much help she was really going to be. She followed June down the hall to the small guest bedroom in the back of the house where a box was waiting on the bed. A large, square box with a red bow. “What’s up, boss-lady?”

June laughed. “I haven’t been your boss now for longer than I was,” she reminded; a shock to Darcy, for whom the last three years had flown by. “I just wanted to give you something,” she motioned for Darcy to sit next to her on the edge of the bed. They sat together, but June didn’t reach for the box straight away. “And I wanted you to know how much you and Steve mean to me, and Ray and the girls, too, of course.” She placed her hand over Darcy’s in the space between them. She smiled and shook her head. “I’m going to sound like a silly old woman,” she said before she continued. “But it really does feel like yesterday that you were sitting at my counter, counting out change between the two of you to split a slice of strawberry pie.”

Darcy smiled and felt a lump rise in her throat. “Two pitiful, homeless puppies,” she remembered quietly and turned her wrist to lace her fingers with June’s. “You saved our lives, Junie,” she reminded gently. “Gave us a home and jobs and a way to get back on our feet…I’ll never be able to repay that,” she added. “Not for as long as I live.”

“Oh honey,” Junie’s brown eyes sparkled in the moment before she blinked rapidly. “There’s no debt to repay; I only brought it up because I wanted to tell you…” she paused and seemed to be considering her words carefully. “I don’t know anything about your life before you came here…your family—” she said finally, keeping her eyes cast down for a moment. “And you don’t ever have to tell me,” she added quickly. “I just…” Another pause. “Well, I guess I just wanted you to know how proud I am of the life you made for yourself here.” June decided finally; her throat bobbed as Darcy squeezed her fingers again. “And I know I don’t know anything about your parents but, wherever they are, I have to think they’d be proud of you, too.”

Darcy’s vision swam and she let out wet laugh as she wrapped her arms around June and pulled her into a tight hug. “You’re killin’ me, June,” she whispered, desperately trying to stem the tears that wanted to rush to her eyes and nose.

June was sniffling when she pulled back and swiped, not at her own eyes, but at the tears on Darcy’s cheeks first. “I also wanted to give you this,” she said, reaching for the gift behind her on the bed. Darcy untied the bow and lifted the lid of the box. Inside was a folded quilt with an intricate pattern, pieces of blue and gray and dark red, with hints of teal and soft yellow—the colors Steve had used when he was painting the nursery. Soft to the touch, thick and downy, and with the words ‘Made with Love’ embroidered along the edge.

“June…” Darcy breathed, taking it out of the box to lay it over her belly and lap to see it fully. “It’s beautiful.”

“My mother made one for each of my girls,” June said. “With scraps from dresses my sisters and I had worn when we were children.” Darcy smiled down at the quilt in her lap, running her fingers over the stitching, wondering how long it had taken June to make this for her. “Of course, I didn’t have anything of yours to use,” she went on, surprising Darcy enough to look back up at her. “But this,” she pointed to one of the light blue pieces, “is from the dress Carla wore on her first day of school. And this one,” a red piece, “is from one of Rachel’s jumpers. And this over here,” her fingers moved to point out the teal rectangle. “This is from Tangie,” She moved over to another red piece, “Tina gave me this…”

Linda and Alice had given her swatches of fabric, too. Each of them offering a piece of something they had loved so she could stitch this together for Darcy. It wasn’t until she looked a little closer that she realized with another wet laugh, that the yellow pieces were actually part of a uniform from the diner. Junie had managed to stitch together everything Darcy loved about her life into one quilt she could wrap her baby in.

Carefully, she set the blanket down between them and took June’s hands again. “This is beautiful,” she said sincerely. “Thank you _so_ much.” Her heart stuck in her throat for a long moment while she debated if she could really make herself ask her next question. “I don’t…um,” she looked down. “This might sound—” she stopped and shook her head. “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes…and if you’re not comfortable with it, please don’t just try to be polite—”

The lines on June’s face had deepened in confusion. “What is it?”

“I guess I’m a little worried,” she admitted. “That…well, I mean, it’s just Steve and I, like you said. We don’t—there aren’t any…” she frowned and took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you’d be okay with the baby thinking of you and Ray as like…” she tried to shrug like it wouldn’t mean the world to her to have June be okay with this. “Grandparents?”

But June’s face only brightened with delight and Darcy felt herself being hugged tightly again. “Oh, honey,” a kiss was pressed to her temple and her eyes welled again. “I’ve been trying out the way ‘Grandma Junie’ sounds for months now, you can ask Ray.”

Darcy laughed as they separated and wiped again at her eyes. “I think it sounds good,” she said in a wobbly voice.

Junie leaned over and kissed her cheek again. “I think so too.”

_December_

Steve’s thrashing shook her awake one night, two weeks before Christmas. She squinted in the dark, groggy for a moment before she recognized the familiar shallow breathing, the moans he was suppressing through a clenched jaw, the vice-like grip he had on the sheets at his side. With some effort, Darcy pushed herself up to sitting and turned toward him.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Steve, you’re okay,” she promised and bit her lip, watching him shake his head furiously. As her eyes adjusted in the dark, she saw the sweat prickled on his forehead.

“No,” he said quietly, in a voice so small it clenched like a fist around her heart. “No… _please_ —”

“Steve,” she said a little louder and chanced reaching over to touch his shoulder. His fists clenched tighter and the sheets tore like tissue paper. “Fuck,” she sighed and shook him harder. “ _Steve_.”

She pulled back as he bolted upright with a cry, shredding the sheets further and looking around with sharp, acute confusion while his chest rose and fell with his rapid breathing.

Cautiously, Darcy placed a hand between his shoulder blades. He whipped around, eyes wide. “Hey,” she said softly when his gaze met hers. “You’re okay,” she insisted. “You’re safe.”

“Darcy,” he breathed, turning more to face her as his breathing began to slow. “You’re okay,” he repeated her words back to her.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, sliding her hand up to curl around the back of his neck. “We’re all okay.” His arms went around her, and his forehead dropped to her shoulder. She pushed her fingers through his hair, feeling the way his heart was still pounding in his chest. “It was just a nightmare,” she reminded him. “Everything’s okay.”

“Sorry,” he said, not letting go. “Sorry to wake you—”

“It’s fine,” she cut him off. “Are you all right?”

He pulled back after another few long moments and nodded. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked like he’d been running a marathon. “Been a minute,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Since I had one this bad, at least.”

_This bad_ was relative.

There’d been a rash of these violent nightmares right after they’d found out she was pregnant. Steve had woken up screaming, crying, thrashing at nothing. More than once she’d missed the initial jolt out of bed but had opened her eyes to find him watching her sleep—staring at her like he didn’t trust that she was really there.

They’d slowed down to almost dormant again in her second trimester, but as the year wound down and January and her due date drew closer, the worse and more frequent these flashbacks became.

He ran a hand over his face, his palm scraping loudly against his beard, and sighed heavily. He looked her over again, appearing to reaffirm her presence in his mind and smiled sadly. “You should lay back down,” he suggested. “I’m probably going to be up for a while.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m awake now,” she said, not bothering to lie. She’d learned years ago that he’d feel the same amount of guilt whether she pretended to go back to sleep or waited up with him until the fight had dissipated from his veins. She scratched lightly at the back of his neck again with her nails. “And I’m hungry.”

To her relief, he smiled faintly and got up, coming around to her side of the bed to help pull her to her feet. She kept her hand in his, letting him lead her down the hall. He pulled out a chair for her at the dining room table and shuffled into the kitchen to turn on the light above the stove. She didn’t sit but followed him to lean against the doorway. “What are you doing?”

He stopped, his arm still reaching for the cabinet, and looked back over her shoulder. “Do you want something other than pancakes?”

Darcy pressed her lips together and smothered a smile as she felt her cheeks turn pink. “No,” she admitted. “But I can make them—you don’t have to.”

He shook his head. “Go have a seat,” he nodded toward the dining room again. “They won’t take long.”

True to his word, they didn’t take long at all. Steve set a plate of four fluffy pancakes in front of her, along with the butter and a bottle of syrup, before he returned to the kitchen. Darcy watched, amused, as he set a side plate with two little silver-dollar sized pancakes on the ground for Scrabble. “Sorry for the scare earlier, buddy,” he said, scratching the cat behind the ears as he dug into his midnight treat. She didn’t realize he’d caught the way Scrabble had bolted from the bed, fur standing on edge and tail puffed out like a feather duster when Steve had shot up from his nightmare.

Scrabble purred loudly as he ate. Apparently, all was forgiven.

He hadn’t made any pancakes for himself but sat at the table with her and sipped at a glass of water, not saying much. Darcy watched him out of the corner of her eye; the shadows lingered in his eyes. The tension hadn’t dissolved from his shoulders. “Can you tell me about it?” she asked finally.

He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’ll be fine,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But if you can,” she paused and swallowed the bite she’d just stuffed into her mouth. “I want to know what you’re seeing.”

Steve’s jaw squared and he shook his head again. “It’s not…” He exhaled heavily. “If I told you,” he said after a long moment, “you’d wish you hadn’t asked.”

Darcy set down her fork and closed her eyes, pinching at the bridge of her nose, hoping to fend off the headache he seemed intent to give her. She licked the syrup from her lips and reached across the table to take one of his hands in both of hers. “Steve,” her voice was soft, but her tone was firm. “You’re not protecting me from anything by not letting me help you.”

“Darcy,” he didn’t look up from their hands joined on the table. “It’s ok—”

“No,” she insisted, not raising her voice. “It isn’t okay. You're getting worse. There's something about this baby that's triggering something to scare the shit out of you and even if I can’t do anything about it, I think I deserve to know what it is.”

Steve didn’t argue or try to deflect. He didn’t say anything, in fact. He just slipped his hand from between hers, pushed back from the table, and silently made his way into the living room, where she heard him drop down onto the couch with another sigh.

Darcy considered getting straight up to follow him. But her eyes strayed back to her plate. He clearly wasn’t going anywhere, and he didn’t want to talk to her, and those pancakes weren’t going to maintain optimal pancake-to-syrup-absorption ratio for much longer. She stayed in her chair and finished her meal.

Steve hadn’t moved by the time she’d placed her sticky plate in the dishwasher and followed him slowly into the living room. He looked up when she’d made it to the doorway. “It’s not that big of a house,” she reminded lightly. “If you wanted to run away from me, you should have gone farther.”

“I don’t want to run away from you,” he said quietly, offering a hand she didn’t take when she edged past him and eased herself onto the couch. “I just…” he ran a hand over his face again. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start with what woke you up,” she suggested, using the back of the couch to shift herself to be angled toward him. “Tell me about your nightmare.”

There was another long pause—so long she wasn’t sure if he was going to speak at all—but finally, in a low and quiet voice, he said, “He came back.”

She nodded and waited a moment before she asked, “Thanos?”

It wasn’t a name they said too often. She knew about Thanos, knew about his lust for power and flair for genocide; Steve had told her about The Snap—filled in what Natasha had only had time to gloss over. She knew that they had undone it—they’d brought back everyone who had faded away. They’d won, technically, but it wasn’t a victory that had been without cost.

Steve nodded and Darcy watched his jaw clench again. She put aside her irritation at his reluctance to talk and reached out to take his hand again. He didn’t pull away, so she set his hand on her knee, palm up, and traced a fingertip lightly over the deep lines she found there. “He was here,” he said. “He’d…he’d _been_ here.”

“Here…” she said slowly. “Like in our house?”

He nodded again. “I came home, and he was…” his jaw clenched again, his gaze steadily focused on the trail of her finger across his palm. “Waiting for me. You were dead, everything was…” he shook his head slightly. “I was back on that battlefield in New York and… And he was back, telling me I should have made sure I finished the job.”

She pursed her lips. “But you _did_ finish the job,” she prompted quietly. “He’s gone.”

“I don’t know that for sure.”

“Have you met you?” she asked, ducking her head to force him to meet her eyes. She let a half-smile tug at her lips. “You’re not the kind of guy to leave anything half-done.”

He humored her with a faint smile that faded too quickly. “But I _don’t_ know, Darcy,” he said firmly. “I don’t know what happened to Thanos after Tony…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know what happened to any of them. They just faded away. They had to go somewhere.” He paused and looked up again. “If we could bring back everyone from the first Snap…”

She curled her fingers around his. “But who would bring him back?” she asked. “You brought everyone back because you loved the people you lost—who would…?”

“Someone might.”

They were quiet again. Darcy kept her hand in Steve’s, turning over what she wanted to say for a few long moments before she cleared her throat. “Will you tell me what happened?” she asked finally. He looked up. “That last day…the one you keep going back to. Will you please just tell me about it?”

To her surprise, he did. It took a long time—he spoke haltingly about how Scott, Clint, Bruce and Rhodey had been trapped in the rubble and almost drowned. If she didn’t know him so well, she would have said he was having trouble remembering the things Thanos had said, the horrors he’d vowed to inflict on the world once he’d killed them all. But it wasn’t that he didn’t remember—he could still hear it as clearly as if Thanos was standing in the living room with them.

He was right, she wished she hadn’t asked. But not for the reasons he meant. She would listen to him talk about blood-soaked battlegrounds and murderous aliens all night if it meant he felt better, but what she hated to hear were the things he didn’t think twice about. The stories about how he’d stayed on a helicarrier while it was crashing because he didn’t care if he died while trying to save Bucky. The stories from her history books about him nosediving a plane full of bombs directly into the Arctic ocean to save as many lives as possible with no regard for his own. Staying behind while Sokovia flew higher and higher above the ground, desperate to make sure as many innocent people made it off okay before he considered whether he’d be among them.

This story was no different. Steve against impossible odds, serving his own life up on a silver platter for the chance to offer one last shred of protection for the rest of the world.

She waited until he was done, until he’d gotten all the way through to the very end, letting him grip her fingers tighter when his voice hitched at the memory of Sam’s voice coming through his earpiece, and take as long as he needed to talk about how shockingly light Tony’s body was when he and Thor carried him off the battlefield.

“Steve,” she said softly when he finally sat back, pulling her hand with him. “How can you think that’s a job you left undone?”

He looked up and stared at her before he moved his shoulder. “If it’s done, then why—” he broke off and swallowed hard. “Why can’t I shake this? Why am I still afraid of him?”

She watched, at a loss, while he shifted forward in frustration and put his head in his hands. “I don’t think you are,” she said softly, running her nails along his back. Steve looked back at her over his shoulder. She bit her lip and went on. “Didn’t you say that in the beginning of your nightmare, you came home, and I was dead?” He didn’t say anything, so she kept going, letting the words tumble off her tongue as fast as she could line them up in her mind. “Don’t you think it’s possible that you’re afraid of something happening to me or Smudge that you won’t be able to protect us from? That you’re trying to act like you’re _not_ having a completely normal freak-out at the idea of us having a baby in less than a month? And since you have legitimate, real-life monsters in your past, your subconscious is bringing up the worst of the worst trying to get you to process this fear?”

Steve blinked and looked at her for what felt like a long time before he sat back again. “No.”

"No?" Darcy stared. “You don’t want think about that for a minute before you answer?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. “I just lay all that out for you like a goddamn therapist and you can’t be bothered to consider it for more than second before you shut me down?”

He moved a shoulder again and looked genuinely disinterested. “It just sounds like you’re reaching to make me feel better.”

“I’m reach—” she dropped off at the sight of Steve’s lips fighting a smile. She scoffed and smacked his arm. “You are such a troll. Do you know that? Has anyone ever told you what an absolute gremlin you are?”

But it was a relief to hear Steve laugh before he took her hands in his. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her hands to his chest and kissing her fingers. “I’m sorry—I just needed a second.”

Darcy shook her head and sighed. “Because you think I’m right and that’s hard to hear? Or because you think I’m wrong and you’re working on an argument?”

The next smile he offered was smaller. A little tighter. “The former.”

She relaxed a little bit and freed one of her hands so she could push her fingers through his hair. “Want to know what I’m afraid of?”

“Yeah.”

Darcy wet her lips and took a deep breath. From somewhere close to her ribcage, the baby gave a firm kick. “I’m afraid that I’ll forget what it’s like to be a kid and I won’t think the right things are important.” She looked down at her perfectly round midsection and felt the familiar flood of love and panic and fear and affection. “I’m afraid that…” she pursed her lips. “There’s so much I’m not going to be able to tell him or her—so many things I have to lie about—” she cut herself off with a shrug. “Although, people manage to screw up their kids with _out_ having to keep a deep, dark time-traveler secret so maybe I’m giving myself too much credit straight out the gate.”

“Darcy…”

“Your turn,” she prompted, looking up to find him studying her, an unreadable expression on his face. “Make me feel better. What’s something you’re afraid of?”

His throat bobbed. “That I don’t have any idea on how to be a dad.” Darcy felt her heart twist unexpectedly. “That I’ll do something wrong or say something wrong or lose my temper and our kid will grow up hating me…or worse.”

She frowned. “What would be worse than having them hate you?”

He swallowed again. “What if I scare them? Or I don’t know how to talk to them? Or listen to them? Or…I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what good dads are like. I don’t even know what _bad_ dads are like.”

She cleared her throat. “Steve,” she said seriously. “Do you know why I fell in love with you?”

He looked up, surprised by the question. “Lack of options?”

Darcy snorted and rolled her eyes. “Because you’re kind,” she said, not wanting to give in and let him deflect his way out of the conversation with a joke. “And you’re patient and sweet and after everything you’ve been through? After everything you lost? No one would blame you for staying angry forever and letting that turn you into something cruel or cold. But…you’re not. You’re kind and protective,” a soft smile tugged at her lips. “And even a little silly sometimes.” She coaxed him forward with the hand curled around the back of his neck until their foreheads touched. “And there’s no one in the world who could love this baby more than you do.” She stretched her neck forward and brush her lips to his. “So I think we’re going to be okay.”

He held her face in one hand as the other drifted down to her belly. “I love you,” he said quietly.

Darcy smiled against his lips and moved his hand so he could feel the kick on her left side as she kissed him again. “We love you, too.” They traded kisses, slow and relaxed, back and forth before a thought struck Darcy and she pulled back. “But since you brought it up—”

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“We love you,” she repeated. “And we need you and we want you around for a very long time. So can you at least promise me that your days of idiot-self-sacrifice are more or less behind you?”

Steve blinked. “Idiot-self-sacrifice?” he repeated with a scoff.

“What would you call walking out onto a battlefield against every monster in the galaxy, entirely on your own, with a broken shield and no backup?”

His mouth opened once, then closed, then opened again. Uncertainty croaked at the back of his throat. “I…wasn’t sacrificing myself.”

She squinted. “Then you must have told that part of the story wrong.”

“I didn’t tell it wrong,” he insisted. “I _wasn’t_ sacrificing myself and I wasn’t…I mean…I had more than the shield.”

“Plucky courage doesn’t count,” she informed him flatly.

He huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “Someday, you and Bucky are going to have a whole lot to talk about,” he muttered. “Look, the thing is, I couldn’t just wait for Tony and Thor to get up. It was more about making a statement.”

“Was the statement, ‘My name is Steve Rogers and I had to sell my self-preservation instinct in 1932 for a salt and pepper sandwich'?”

His laugh was more genuine the next time. “Salt and pepper sandwiches…” he repeated, shaking his head. “Where did you hear about that?”

“My grandpa,” she laughed. “If you went by his account, that’s all anyone ate during The Depresssion. And lard was a treat.”

“Mmm,” he nodded. “Lard _was_ a treat.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

Steve reached up to stroke his thumb across her cheek again. “I’ll do my best,” he said softly, more serious. “If I can help it,” he added, “no more self-sacrifice.”

She closed the distance between them and kissed him. “Thank you.”

With some difficulty, she shifted her legs back beneath her and pushed herself off the couch to stand, accepting Steve’s hand for balance this time when he held it out to her. “You going back to bed?”

She nodded and gave him a light pull upward. “And you’re coming with me.”

He shook his head. “I’m done sleeping for the night, Darce.”

“So am I,” she offered him a grin and raised her eyebrows invitingly. “That’s why you’re coming with me.”

She didn’t let go of his hand until she’d dropped down onto the edge of the bed, then she shuffled clumsily backward, kicking away her pajama pants and panties together. Steve followed her, bracketing her bare legs with his knees as his fingers brushed the hem of her t-shirt. She pulled his face down for a kiss. “You can leave that,” she said between brushes of his lips against hers.

His hands stilled and he pulled back slightly to look at her. “Please?” he asked softly.

She laughed softly and wrinkled her nose. “I’m so huge,” she said lightly, running her fingers along his shoulders.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said, his voice still soft and his eyes open for her to see he really meant it. “Let me look at you.”

Unable to deny his request, she nodded and lifted her arms for him to pull the snug-fitting fabric over her head. The chill in the room prickled her skin in goosebumps and peaked her already sensitive nipples. Steve leaned down and captured her lips with his, lacing their fingers together long enough to pull her hands away from the reddish, purple stretchmarks decorating her skin like tiger stripes. She let him, allowing her hands to drop to her sides as she sighed at the first touch of his palms against her breasts.

His hands skated over her body, trailing slow, teasing touches over her belly and her full thighs before he sat back on his heels and pulled his shirt off. He reached behind her and gathered their pillows to pile behind her so she could recline and stay off her back. She sank down with another sound of relief as the muscles in her lower back relaxed.

Steve’s hand slipped between her legs the moment he gave her space to spread them. He leaned in to kiss her again, swallowing the sounds she made, his tongue stroking over hers while his fingers found her clit and circled slowly. She reached to tug at the strings of his pajama pants, pulling him closer so she could run her nails over the muscles of his stomach. She grinned against his lips when she felt him squirm as she grazed the underside of his ribs.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked, nipping kisses along her neck.

“You,” she said around a sharp inhale as he pressed down harder. “You’re so cute.”

His laugh was a puff of warm breath against her neck. “You were calling me a self-sacrificing idiot ten minutes ago.”

“That hasn’t changed,” she promised. “But I forgot how ticklish you are,” she swiped her nails along his ribs again. "It's _cute._ " He jolted a second time, but Darcy’s giggles turned into a soft moan when he pulled his hand from between her thighs. “I’ll stop,” she whined before she could help herself.

She felt him smile against her collarbone. “I know you will,” he assured her, getting up long enough to rid himself of the sweatpants he’d worn to bed. He was back before she had time to miss him, shuffling the pillows again and easing her down onto her side.

His arms wrapped around her; one pillowed her head while the other snaked up to squeeze her breasts again. Darcy reached back for him as the tip of his cock brushed her entrance. “Please, Steve,” she breathed, suddenly desperate. He shifted his hips and pushed into her slowly, groaning into the crook of her neck.

“Okay?” he asked, the question muffled as his teeth tugged on her earlobe.

She nodded around another moan as he pulled out and thrust in again. Her one hand stayed gripping his hip while the other laced with Steve’s hand kneading her breast and dragged it back down between her legs.

He started to move faster as their fingers worked over her clit together. “Harder,” she whined, pushing back against him. He obeyed, rolling his hips hard against her ass until they were both gasping for breath, his mouth hot against the back of her neck.

She came hard and unexpectedly with a sharp cry, her body going stiff for a moment before relief rolled through her limbs, making her weak and giddy. Steve’s lips were against her ear again while his hand moved back up to hold her belly. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, a raw honesty in his voice that brought a lump to her throat.

When he came a moment later it was with a rough groan into her hair, his grip on her firm and possessive. He pulled out but they stayed spooned together, breathing hard, clinging to each other in the soft glow of the moonlight through the curtains.

She didn’t bother getting dressed again when she shuffled under the covers after she’d cleaned up in the bathroom. Steve cuddled around her and kissed the back of her neck. “I love you,” he said into her messy hair.

Darcy smiled and pulled his hand up to kiss the tips of his fingers. “I love you too,” she said before he rested his palm on her belly again.

**Author's Note:**

> Of note: Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist during WW2 and joined the army as part of the 1st Motion Picture Unit. Do I think that he might have bumped into Steven Grant Rogers once or twice while the Captain America films were being made? Yes. Yes, I do. 
> 
> \----
> 
> Come play with me on tumblr: @idontgettechnology and join me at ishipitpod.com for weekly podcast on fandom and fanfic by yours truly.
> 
> *kisses*


End file.
